Mother’s Day will be bitter for some, sweet for others

SOUL FOOD

Sunday is Mother’s Day.

It’s not a religious holiday but, all the same, on Sunday morning

spiritual leaders across the country will surely be speaking on

motherhood, its sweetness, its heartaches and its duties.

Many will focus on the love and gratitude and duties of children

toward their mothers. Christian pastors might evoke what St. Paul

called the first commandment with promise: “Honor your father and

mother that it may be well with you.” Ephesians 6:2, 3

Some will trace the give-and-take of parenting. They’ll quote from

Proverbs 23:24, “He who begets a wise child will delight in him. Let

her who bore you rejoice,” and from Ephesians 6:4, “Do not provoke

your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and

admonition of the Lord.”

Some will seek to encourage. Some will scold and chide. In all my

years in church, though, I’ve never heard a Mother’s Day sermon that

acknowledged the pain the day holds for so many of us:

Children who have lost their mothers through separation,

abandonment or death; mothers who have buried one or more of their

children;

Children at odds with their mothers in ways that seem hopeless to

reconcile; children rejected, abused or neglected; mothers, too,

abused or neglected by a child; women who long to be mothers yet know

they never will be.

Hallmark cards read like all of our Mother’s Days are full of

golden memories and promise, but it’s just not true.

A story from Friday’s news reminds us all too well. Luis and

Jacquelyn Gutierrez, the parents of 1-year-old Samantha Rose who died

in March, lost custody of their other three children because they are

suspected of killing the toddler.

Samantha’s 5-year-old brother has said his mother smothered

Samantha, who had also been beaten, to death.

This year, as the day arrives on the heels of our war with Iraq,

the day is more likely than usual to be full of sorrow for a lot of

mothers and children.

A few days ago as I was flipping through the back issues of a

weekly magazine, I came across a story from late February about our

servicemen and women preparing to leave for the Middle East.

Beneath a photo of an unidentified soldier, the caption read, “A

U.S. soldier prepares to ship out.”

I recognized the soldier as Pfc. Lori Piestewa, the first Native

American soldier and the first servicewomen to die in the war.

On Sunday, her two young children and her mother will mark their

first Mother’s Day without her. God knows they are not alone. A pall

will hang over the day for many U.S. families who have lost a loved

one, a mother or daughter, a son or a father or a spouse.

What kind of card does Hallmark make for them?

For others it will be a happy day. Dee Lynch, mother of rescued

prisoner of war Pfc. Jessica Lynch, will surely count her blessings

and thank God. No doubt, so will Teresa Lord, Huntington Beach mother

of Lance Cpl. Eric Moore who returned home last week.

Meanwhile, some moms still pray and wait.

Amanda Graybill’s son Brandon, a Marine, is still in Iraq and he

will be for months to come.

“The last time I talked to Brandon, he told me that 39 [Marines]

had been killed in his unit,” she said last Thursday night. “Our

soldiers are still there and they are still at risk.”

With some of our soldiers already arriving home, she’s concerned

that might be easy for us to forget.

On Thursday night, Amanda was getting ready for a flight to

Alabama to attend her father’s funeral but at 7 p.m. she met, as

planned, with Military Families Unite, a group she co-founded to help

support our troops and their loved ones, at First Christian Church.

Together the group walked along Main Street from Yorktown Avenue

to Pacific Coast Highway to hang yellow ribbons on lampposts and

trees.

The ribbons are both a reminder of our troops still in the Middle

East and a welcome home and thank you for those now returning home.

“It’s like sending them a [greeting] card,” Amanda said.

She and the other moms of our servicemen and women deserve a thank

you card, too. A lot of moms do, whether or not their sons and

daughters are soldiers or ever have been.

In grief, in joy, in waiting, may our prayers be with them,

mothers and children alike.

God bless you all on Mother’s Day.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at michele@soulfoodfiles.com.